Crafting since birth; drinking since noon.

Oh, Gmail, don’t ever change. Or, do. Or, … wait, I’m confused.

Do you use Gmail? I do. I have for a while – maybe three years now – although I admit it took me a while to warm up to it. I still miss being able to sort the things in my inbox. But lately they’ve made some changes and I wanted to mention it, in case you’re emailed me lately and haven’t heard anything back.

There are plenty of other posts out there on the subject, but essentially Gmail is now sorting your emails into any of five tabs that you opt to show (if you only opt for three, it’ll sort between those three, etc.): Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. I gather this started rolling out at the beginning of summer, but it appears I was under a rock and didn’t get it until a couple of weeks ago.

One one hand, I kind of like this new action; it filters things into categories that I can then decide to maybe not look at all at once. For instance, I can go through my Primary inbox if I’m pressed for time and then leave Social and Updates for later when I have more time. This could be a great time-saver… or time adjuster, I should say. Instead of looking at everything first thing in the morning, I can (allegedly) look at the important things first thing in the morning and look at other things later in the day or during lunch.

On the other hand, those five names aren’t necessarily what I would want to call filters, and it seems rather arbitrary about how it files some of them (I don’t necessarily think that a notice about a sale should go under “promotions”). Additionally, when you get an email and it gets filtered, a number will appear (like it used to in the inbox) indicating how many new emails you have in that tab. When you go look, that number disappears. And if you’re anything like me, you then immediately forget that you have unread emails in that tab, and you go on do to other things. For a few days. And then you get a new email, go to that section, and suddenly see that you have half a dozen other emails that you haven’t answered.

Whoops.

So if you don’t hear from me for a couple of days? Either your message has been rerouted to “updates” or I am stuck in “social” trying to find my way out!